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A Cult Winemaker Tinkers With Success

Kistler’s Sonoma vineyards now produce wines of finesse rather than power.Credit
Craig Lee for The New York Times

SEBASTOPOL, Calif.

OUT here in Sonoma County south of the Russian River, where a rolling ocean of vineyards surrounds a few surviving Gravenstein apple orchards, the growing season is typically long and warm. Grapes customarily bask in the ripening sun until they practically burst with sweetness. The challenge is to prevent the grapes from ripening too much.

Last year was different. Until the heat spiked at the last minute, 2010 had been one of the coolest seasons on record. Nobody knew if the grapes would mature enough. That meant trouble. Or maybe a lucky break.

“Everybody was worried about getting things ripe,” said Jason Kesner, the assistant winemaker at Kistler Vineyards. “We had the acid, we had the color, we had the flavor, but we didn’t have the typical California sugar to match up with it. We had the tremendous opportunity to make wines at lower alcohol levels. It was the holy grail we’d all been asking for.”

Really? For more than 30 years, restraint was not a quality remotely associated with Kistler. In the 1980s and ’90s, as Americans developed a ravenous thirst for chardonnay, Kistler set a standard of quality with its powerful, oaky, voluptuous wines. Using grapes from small lots in prime vineyards in Sonoma and the Carneros, it was among a handful of California wineries that pioneered the use of Burgundian techniques, like fermenting in small oak barrels.

As Kistler’s lush, exuberant style was widely emulated, it became one of the first modern California cult wineries, its wines available only in restaurants or to long-term customers. It was a model for today’s mailing-list avatars of the full-blown California chardonnay style, like Aubert and Peter Michael. Indeed, some producers began making even more powerful wines so overflowing with flavor they made Kistler’s look almost sedate.

But with little fanfare, the Kistler style has changed in the last few years. Following the evolving tastes of Steve Kistler, one of its proprietors, rather than the pressure of economic necessity, Kistler has stepped back, striving for finesse and energy rather than power.

Kistler’s departure from its extraordinarily successful style is a shock, and perhaps even risky business. And yet the California wine industry has seen a stylistic evolution in the last decade, especially with chardonnays. More and more wines seek elegance and vivacity rather than sumptuous force.

Partly, this is a retreat from the overuse of oak, with many more producers marketing their wines as “unoaked” or “steel fermented.” Similarly, more producers now tout their chardonnays as “Chablis-like,” evoking the leaner, more minerally style of that region rather than the richer, more opulent chardonnays of the Côte de Beaune, the home of Meursault and Montrachet.

Photo

Credit
Craig Lee for The New York Times

Even many chardonnay producers who continue to pursue the Côte de Beaune ideal, like Littorai, Peay, Rivers-Marie and Failla, are aiming more for grace than for power. As a result, the spectrum of California styles seems wider and less monochromatic today, with room for chardonnays in the leanest to the most luxuriant styles. Kistler’s wines are still ample — certainly not on the Chablis end of the spectrum — but they now seem fresher, more focused and finely etched.

“Was there a time when we erred on the side of uniformity, of over-fine tuning, of picking later, only when every last cluster was ripe?” asked Mr. Kistler, who owns the company with his business partner, Mark Bixler. “Maybe so, but we’ve evolved, as I think others have, too.”

While some customers say they miss the wines that made Kistler famous, he says the evolution has mostly been well received.

“We don’t worry if the pinot noir isn’t dark enough,” he said. “Some people do ask us to return to the overblown, blowzy style of chardonnay, but no.”

Indeed, the Kistler business has been affected more by the economy than by the stylistic change, but even the economy hasn’t put a serious crimp into sales. The entire production, about 20,000 cases of chardonnay and 5,000 cases of pinot noir, used to be available only in restaurants or by the mailing list, where the single-vineyard chardonnays sell for around $75 and the pinot noirs range from $75 to $90. But now you can find the Kistler Noisetiers chardonnay, the lowest echelon, a blend of several vineyards but representative of the style, for around $60 in retail shops.

Mr. Kistler, 62, attributes the change inside the bottle to his own developing preferences. “My tastes now run toward more structured, lively wines that go with food, that have power and finesse at the same time,” he said as we spoke outside his winery, looking out over the adjacent Vine Hill Vineyard, the source of some of his best chardonnays. Even there, change is visible. He and Mr. Kesner are replanting part of the vineyard, reorienting and tweaking the vines so the grapes can be picked earlier, when, as Mr. Kesner puts it, “the fruit is at a peak level of energy.”

Even before the changes, Kistler chardonnays were pure and deep. Yet I’d had mixed experiences with them. Some I had found to be wonderfully ripe and laden with mineral flavors, rich yet tense. Others seemed flaccid, hot and oaky, without much staying power. The pinot noirs were commanding expressions of fruit, but somewhat chunky rather than elegant.

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The move to harvest earlier began, almost serendipitously, with the 2006 vintage, when Mr. Kistler had to pick certain lots of chardonnay grapes earlier than usual to beat bad weather. In the resulting wines, which were not released until 2008, he found wonderful and surprising characteristics.

“That was a definite eye-opener,” Mr. Kesner said.

It was a decisive element in a continuing effort, particularly with the pinot noirs, to make wines that were intense but not heavy, fresh rather than brawny. In their quest, they’ve committed themselves to indigenous rather than cultured yeasts, to using fewer new barrels and, over all, to letting go of overt control in the vineyard and cellar. Describing their approach, Mr. Kesner quoted the jazz great Charlie Parker:

“Don’t play the saxophone, let the saxophone play you,” he said.

Mr. Kistler said, simply, “We’ve really worked hard on them the last 10 years, and we’re making much better wines.”

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Steve Kistler (left) and his assistant, Jason Kesner, at Kistler Vineyards in Sebastopol, Calif.Credit
Craig Lee for The New York Times

Tasting the wines, I can’t help but agree with Mr. Kistler. The 2008 McCrea Vineyard chardonnay from Sonoma Mountain is lovely, light-bodied and energetic, with creamy mineral flavors. The ’08 Vine Hill is more austere and tightly coiled than the McCrea, while the ’08 Hudson is richer in texture, with an almost briny flavor, and the ’08 Stone Flat is tangy, with a waxy, lanolin texture and beautiful mineral flavors.

What has not changed at Kistler is an underlying philosophy of meticulous attention to detail with an aim to express subtle differences in terroir. As it always has, Kistler tries to reduce variables so that vineyard characteristics will stand out. It uses only one clone of chardonnay, for example, a California heritage selection rather than something developed in France to meet Burgundian needs. That clone, in turn, mutates over time within each vineyard, becoming part of the terroir.

“We were unusual 30 years ago in that we planted vineyards and chose techniques to make wines of a certain style,” Mr. Kistler said. “We never were interested in fruit-driven chardonnays. Our goal was wonderful mineral wines with a soil-driven character.”

For the pinot noirs, Kistler has narrowed its focus to western Sonoma County and coastal sites east of Bodega Bay. The ’08 Kistler Vineyard pinot noir, from a few miles south of the Vine Hill Vineyard, is surprisingly delicate and harmonious, with lingering floral, fruit and mineral flavors. The ’08 Cuvée Natalie from the nearby Silver Belt Vineyard is more intense, not quite as well-knit, perhaps still a work in progress. By contrast, a barrel sample of a 2009 pinot noir from one of the coastal vineyards stands out for its freshness and energy.

“That’s what makes us as excited as we were 30 years ago,” Mr. Kistler said.

Changes have come not only to the wines, but also to the business. Since its founding in 1978, Kistler has largely been a two-man operation. Mr. Kistler oversaw vineyard and winemaking operations, while Mr. Bixler took charge of laboratory work and the business. In an era of uninhibited marketing in which winemakers have been propelled to superstar status, Mr. Kistler has shunned publicity and overt salesmanship.

“We’ve always been more comfortable letting the wines speak for themselves,” said Mr. Kistler, a lean, private man with a quiet, almost hesitant manner.

In 2008, though, he expanded the roster, adding Mr. Kesner, who, as manager of Hudson Vineyards in Carneros, a prime source for Kistler chardonnays, had established a comfortable working relationship with Mr. Kistler.

“For all those years we got by without assistance,” Mr. Kistler said. “But in order to take everything to the next level, there was only so much I could do.”

The next level meant more than refining the vineyard and cellar work. It also meant thinking of the future. As with many family-run operations, generational succession is an issue. Just a few years ago, Warren Winiarski sold Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, the historic Napa estate, after it became clear that his daughter was not committed to carrying it on. Mr. Kistler has two daughters, but neither so far has become involved in the wine business. Instead of selling, Mr. Kistler hired Mr. Kesner, 42, who says he views his job as an Old World apprenticeship.

Mr. Kesner says he shares Mr. Kistler’s inclination for privacy. But he also said he believes Mr. Kistler deserves more recognition, both for his wines and his dedicated approach, and prodded him to speak publicly.

“I feel very much like Charlie Bucket, and I’ve found the golden ticket,” Mr. Kesner said. “I want everyone to know how wondrous it is inside the chocolate factory.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 12, 2011, on Page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tinkering With Success. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe